An experimental drug has reduced deaths from chronic heart failure by 20 per cent compared with an existing treatment, a new study has claimed.
The drug, being developed by the Swiss pharma giant Novartis, could reach the patients in the US and Europe by next year.
In a large clinical trial, the drug reduced both the risk of dying from cardiovascular causes and the risk of being hospitalised for worsening heart failure by about 20 per cent.
“I think that when physicians see these data, they will find it compelling, and what we will see is a paradigm shift,” said Dr Milton Packer, a professor of clinical sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas and one of the two principal investigators in the study.
According to Novartis executives, the company will file for approval of the drug, called LCZ696, in the US by the end of the year and in Europe in the first quarter of 2015, according to media reports.
